In oil and gas industry, hydrocarbon exploration has recently become more intense, and exploration has been shifting towards evaluation of deeper, horizontal, multi lateral and branched reservoirs. To enable the exploration and production of “advance” oil or gas wells, there is a need for new technological devices for measurement and control. Challenges include the need for such devices to withstand the evaluated temperature and pressure environments as the depth and complexity of exploration increases. For instance, it has been estimated that the operating environment for deep gas drilling in Gulf of Mexico has a temperature of 316° C. and a pressure of 30,450 pound-force per square inch (psi).
Current electronic devices face limitations in operating under such harsh environments. For instance, a sensor has been developed to operate at 500° C. but faces a limitation of only being able to operate up to a pressure of 600 psi. Another sensor developed can operate at 30,000 psi but only up to 260° C. Both of these sensors may not be able to withstand the evaluated temperature and pressure in many environments as the depth and complexity of exploration increases.
Also, many conventional devices may not provide an accurate reading of the external environment. In many situations, the ratio of the actual external pressure of the environment to the sensed pressure fluctuates greatly and non-linearly over the wide range of external pressures that such devices are expected to operate in. As a result, the external pressure cannot be calculated or extrapolated accurately based on the sensed pressure.
Thus, there is a need to provide an improved sensor device that is able to address at least partially the abovementioned challenges.